NieR: Automata, The Wandering Couple
So I’ve been playing NieR: Automata off and on, it’s still fun and the story is...yeah. It’s fantastic. But the subject of the title above is for a side-quest called “The Wandering Couple.”
As I’m sure you can figure out, I’m going to spoil this sidequest because I want to talk about it. SPOILERS for “The Wandering Couple.”
First, for those who don’t know the world, a quick primer. Post-apocalyptic Earth, humanity is living in a bunker on the moon due to aliens who created machine life-forms. Androids, created by the humans, were sent to battle the machines on Earth to reclaim it for humanity. The androids who were on earth, fighting the good fight are called The Resistance. However, your player characters are from a unit called YoRHa. YoRHa is, essentially, a group of top-of-the-line androids. They’re like...special forces androids with very specific missions given by their commander. They work with the Resistance because they are, essentially, on the same side, but YoRHa ops are usually of much higher...stakes and the like.
So you meet a couple from the Resistance who have defected in order to live their own lives and escape the fighting. A male and a female. I’ll refer to them as A and B I suppose.
The first time you run into them, A has a busted leg, and the quest is simply to get them the parts to fix his leg. Simple enough, they thank you, give you some rewards and then move on.
You then run into them near a flooded city, where they say that they want to travel across the sea, and that someone called The Emancipator will help them do so. They won’t do it for cheap though, and they need you to give them 50000 G in order to pay him for the voyage. Now...the first time I played through the game (getting ending A), I didn’t have the money. But the second playthrough I did! So I have them the money and, same thing here, they thank you, give you some rewards and move on.
You return there later and you find A on the ground, and he’s jacked up hard. He tells you that The Emancipator attacked them and was only scamming the androids for money. B is nowhere to be found, and A gets repairs. Your characters then go to find B, who is also pretty fucked up and needs a rare part for repairs. After getting it, A shows up, and B laments that going on the run from the Resistance might have been the wrong thing to do.
She says that life on the run is too hard.
A agrees but asks what there is to be done. B comes up with the idea to return to the Resistance, saying that if they get reformatted, AKA having their memories wiped, they’ll allow them to return.
A fights against this, saying that he’ll “forget about how he feels” about her. B is distraught, saying that if their life continues to be this inevitable hardship, she’ll grow to hate A.
She then says “Even if we get reformatted, I know I’ll fall in love with you.”
A agrees and says to start with him. Your characters agree and reformat his memory. While he’s lying there rebooting, you go to B and say “Okay, now for you.”
And she says “...no, that’s alright, thanks.”
Of course, your characters are confused, so she explains. Her entire plan here was to get A reformatted, with the goal to turn him into a combat-model android, so that they’ll “never have to run from anything ever again.”
She also says “While I’m at it, I’d better delete all his namby-pamby ways. I need someone more forceful in my life, you know?”
And when your characters express shock at this, she just brushes it off.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that! This is the sixth time I’ve had him formatted, and it’s never been a problem.”
...
Yeah. I’m going to be real with you here, there are some other sidequests that have good writing like this, but this one...left me standing in stunned silence. My jaw dropped when that last line went up on my screen. Once the quest was complete, and I had gotten my rewards, I just...stood there. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I’m still reeling from it, because after it happened, I knew I had to write about it here. So this is still pretty recent. Fresh in my mind and just...it just hit me really hard. I thought about the quest and what happened, and wondered if The Emancipator was a really swindling the two, or if maybe B paid him off to attack the two, to keep the illusion going. We actually don’t know if that’s the case, either, but now I couldn’t put it past her!
This shit is so fucked up. It’s...abuse! It’s literally abuse!
And it’s given me some interesting reflection on my reactions to immoral shit. I realize that a lot of time, I go straight for revenge or some kind of justice more than anything else. When the quest is finished, the game fades to black and fades back in, and the couple is just gone. And that infuriated me. I wanted to talk to them again for further clarification. I wanted to read that line one more fucking time. I wanted to grab that android and purposefully reformat her. Or even kill her and let A live his own life without her constantly controlling him. It’s so goddamn sickening and the game doesn’t give you that satisfaction. It doesn’t give you the catharsis of resolving this in a way that seems “fair,” or “right.” It’s just something that I have to accept. Somewhere out there, A and B are together, and A is being reprogrammed. He’s being custom-made for B’s desires, needs, and whims.
And that makes for a brilliant story.
I just...I dunno. I suppose that’s really all I have to share about this. Man this hit me hard.
Please support Yoko Taro’s works, because he’s a brilliant writer and game designer.